The story is simple: Coal Region Connections wrote this in 2014 in summary:
Lying on scorched grass was the mutilated, badly-burned body of a young woman. Her skull was smashed in & there were gashes on her arms & scalp. This murder on the mountain sparked an intense police investigation that yielded little. The perpetrator of this dastardly deed was never discovered. The girl was believed to be between ages 16-20, but she has never been identified to this day. Some say she was a runaway & others speculate she worked at a nearby “house of ill repute”. It has been said her translucent, ghostly figure roams the forest in the area of where the body was discovered. Some folks say their car headlights have dimmed traveling over the Broad Mt., while others claim “spirit energies” have shut down car engines & radios.
The ghost tale has lessened in circulation through the years as development of the mountain continued. In our modern times, the scariest thing about the Gordon mountain now is stuck behind a tractor trailer as it makes to interstate 81. But at one time, the ghost mountain was a must during the October season, or any date night when someone’s goal was to get closer to a significant other.
But there is a real story, and a real crime beyond the myth.
In early April, 1925, a flock of crows attracted the hikers to a small clearing where they discovered the horrific sight. The charred remains of a corpse on the Gordon mountain. This is how the Republican Herald captured the moment on April 6 1925 front page reporting:
State Police began an investigation into the body.. who murdered her.. what was her identity. The train bound for Ashland from Chicago.. a young 17 to 20 year old girl, “good looking” as the newspaper at the time said..
The late Doctor Spencer (who you may know from a previous Coal Speaker post on the famous Spencer House in Ashland) reportedly performed the autopsy on the grounds of the Ashland State Hospital. It was Spencer’s opinion that that the girl was still alive when gasoline was poured on her body and ignited, causing a twisting of the face in pain.
Police felt that her charred remains were transported to the Gordon Mountain after murder.. Their running belief about the crime was that there was a desperate struggle. There was evidence that her clothing was soaked engine oil.
All eyes pointed to Centralia PA.. In the days after the discovery of her remains, there was a raid on the Sunset Inn in Centralia and police began making arrests. The murder investigation did one thing: It discovered an active prostitution and gambling ring at the Sunset. Louis Muff and four others were bailed out after they were swept up by cops in the aftermath of the murder.
The bartender at the Sunset denied seeing a blood-stained club that was founding hanging UNDER THE BAR.
Additionally, a chauffeur for Louis Muff known as “Moth Balls” told police he hauled a dead body to the Broad Mountain! Incidentally, the Mount Carmel ITEM placed that story conspicuously next to an ad for a car:
Police actively tried to conclude an identity. They figured they had a lead until they discovered Anna Sullivan *or* Smith, the woman they thought was killed, very much alive!
This added discomfort to locals then, as police and newspapers tried to hammer the notion that “police expect to solve the crime speedily.”
Eventually, another potential name was revealed, and cops felt they found their victim: Lillian Tyler from Shamokin, PA. On April 14, the UPI entered this dispatch to their global wires from Mt. Carmel PA:
What started to create some of the lure around this story was not only the macabre mystery of who burned a body, but also confounding stories like this which appeared in the April 22, 1925 Pottsville Republican, reported swirled that Lillian Tyler was actually NOT dead but very much alive:
A dentist from Shamokin, Dr. McDonald, was called in to examine. He insisted that dental records proved that the body was Tyler despite the doubts.
Months later in June 1925, another front page story appeared in the Mount Carmel ITEM stating that Lillian Tyler’s mom, Francis O’Connor of Shamokin, wanted to secure the release of her daughter from the City House of Detention in Detroit.. Tyler told cops she was taken to Detroit by Stanley Bilitski of Mt Carmel, and they “engaged a room on Congress street where they registered as man and wife.” A week later she was left by her escort penniless… Detroit police notified PA State Police in Pottsville that the supposed victim was in their custody:
By July of that year, it appeared that another possibly existed: Doctor Spencer from Ashland again added mystery in the mix when he said that a New York woman who was missing could be the dead girl on the Gordon Mountain. This appeared in the Shamokin News Dispatch on July 6, 1925:
The head of the dead girl was being kept in a jar.. It was being preserved in the archives of Ashland State Hospital. So any time a description of someone missing occurred. they were able to compare it to the read head being kept in a real jar of the real corpse… The hand of the girl was reportedly preserved in alcohol for 17 years and the head eventually went to State Police headquarters in Harrisburg….
And that was 1925 investigation 101.
The case remained then and even now a mystery. No one quite knows whodunit. No one quite knows whowasit. Neither the victim’s true identity or the killer or killers have been revealed. As cold cases go, this is as cold as you can get.
Time has marched on, the villains and victims are now just snippets in old newspapers.. The folklore of the location has even become a little dated.
What remains is a true unsolved crime that was an indication of the coal region at the time; Houses of gambling run by mobs, prostitution and human trafficking left unchecked, a medical system illustrative of its time, and the screams of a victim whose identity we don’t know and most likely never will. As the murderer got away with it…
